Washington State Republican Party endorses Semi Bird’s gubernatorial candidacy

Ultra MAGA guber­na­to­r­i­al hope­ful Semi Bird received the endorse­ment of the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty yes­ter­day, giv­ing his long­shot can­di­da­cy a minor boost with only a few weeks to go until the can­di­date fil­ing peri­od opens and infu­ri­at­ing sup­port­ers of Dave Reichert, the lead­ing Repub­li­can can­di­date accord­ing to NPI’s research.

The endorse­ment was made at the 2024 Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Con­ven­tion in Spokane, which ram­bunc­tious Chair Jim Walsh had hoped would be a uni­fy­ing event for the Ever­green State chap­ter of Don­ald Trump’s polit­i­cal cult. 

Instead, how­ev­er, the con­ven­tion show­cased the par­ty’s divisions. 

For instance, when Jaime Her­rera Beut­ler showed up to speak, many del­e­gates rude­ly turned their backs to her. And Reichert chose not to show up at all after it became appar­ent that Bird was on track to be endorsed, despite a find­ing from a par­ty com­mit­tee that he had not been ful­ly forth­com­ing about his crim­i­nal past. (Del­e­gates sub­se­quent­ly vot­ed to ignore that report and make Bird eli­gi­ble for endorsement.) 

Sev­er­al reporters cov­ered the con­ven­tion, some in tan­dem with pho­tog­ra­phers from their news­room. Here’s how each of their out­lets framed this week­end’s events:

• The Seat­tle Times: WA GOP endors­es Semi Bird for gov­er­nor at Trump-dom­i­nat­ed con­ven­tion (Report­ing by Jim Brunner)
• The Spokesman-Review: State Repub­li­can Par­ty con­ven­tion erupts in chaos after GOP lead­ers try to stop gov­er­nor endorse­ment vote (Report­ing by Ellen Dennis)
• The Wash­ing­ton State Stan­dard: ‘Voice of the peo­ple’? ‘Chaot­ic mess’? Endorse­ment tur­moil at WA GOP con­ven­tion (Report­ing by Jer­ry Cornfield)
• KUOW: Chaos and divi­sion erupt at Wash­ing­ton Repub­li­can con­ven­tion in Spokane (Report­ing by Scott Green­stone and Catharine Smith)

Kien­an Briscoe also wrote an orig­i­nal report for the right wing-lean­ing Lyn­nwood Times (Con­ven­tion chaos after WSRP attempts to pull guber­na­to­r­i­al endorse­ment vote).

You can see above that the word “chaos” or “chaot­ic” appeared in near­ly every head­line. That’s because the jour­nal­ists and observers present wit­nessed a lot of pro­fane yelling, argu­ment, and dis­cord. It was “a clown show,” to quote Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate read­er Andy Stevens, one of the more thought­ful Repub­li­cans we know. 

Walsh tried to push back as hard as he could against that framing.

“Let’s help our friends in the media under­stand that this is not chaos. This is not chaot­ic. This is a live and real polit­i­cal con­ven­tion,” Walsh said yes­ter­day in remarks report­ed by Brun­ner for the Sun­day edi­tion of The Seat­tle Times.

Walsh might not like the word chaos due to its neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tions, but that’s how peo­ple were in the room in Spokane described the pro­ceed­ings. It was a live and real polit­i­cal con­ven­tion, sure, but it was also chaotic. 

And, in Dave Reichert’s view, unfair and corrupt.

Here’s what he had to say on Fri­day after decid­ing not to show up in Spokane:

“In the past 24 hours, it has become clear that some in the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty are in such dis­ar­ray that they’re con­sid­er­ing mak­ing no endorse­ment for gov­er­nor. This, after they con­tin­u­al­ly changed rules, broke rules, and twist­ed the process to accom­plish their desired out­come. I’m not here to fix the par­ty but to fix our bro­ken state. Giv­en these decep­tive and dis­hon­est events, I’m with­draw­ing my name for con­sid­er­a­tion for the guber­na­to­r­i­al endorse­ment through this con­ven­tion process. I am still seek­ing the endorse­ment of Repub­li­cans statewide and recon­firm my inten­tion to fight for the state as a Repub­li­can all the way to Novem­ber. My focus con­tin­ues to be on fix­ing what’s bro­ken and doing what’s right. That begins by defeat­ing Bob Ferguson.”

Reichert actu­al­ly did come to the Lilac City, accord­ing to The Spokesman-Review, and was pre­pared to speak, but then decid­ed he did­n’t want to show up at the con­ven­tion or be asso­ci­at­ed with a “deceit­ful” process. He made him­self avail­able to reporters to dis­cuss his deci­sion. Here’s what he said to The Spokesman­’s Ellen Den­nis:

In a phone inter­view Fri­day night, Reichert told The Spokesman-Review that he showed up to the con­fer­ence Thurs­day “ful­ly intend­ing” to go. The can­di­date was sched­uled to give a speech Friday.

Then par­ty offi­cials attempt­ed to change the rules, Reichert added, and “find a way” to dis­qual­i­fy him after they tried to dis­qual­i­fy Bird.

“They decid­ed to change the rules again and take the guber­na­to­r­i­al race off the agen­da,” he said. “There was no point to show up because they can­celed the vote and can­celed my speak­ing role.”

Reichert called the process “decep­tive” and “deceit­ful.”

“The party’s been tak­en hostage by a group of peo­ple,” he said. “You can see that hap­pen­ing across the state.”

The par­ty’s been tak­en hostage.

Those aren’t the words of a Demo­c­ra­t­ic strate­gist, a jour­nal­ist, or an inde­pen­dent observ­er. They are the words of the Repub­li­can fron­trun­ner for gov­er­nor, who spent his final two years in Con­gress vot­ing with Don­ald Trump in almost every instance. 

Bird may have the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty’s endorse­ment, but Reichert can take solace in this: unless Bird can use that endorse­ment as a spring­board to get Don­ald Trump to endorse him, it’s prob­a­bly not going to do much for his cam­paign. Bird is beloved by the ultra MAGA diehards who go to par­ty meet­ings, but he has­n’t been able to win over most Repub­li­can vot­ers. That is clear from our polling:

• In June of 2023, the first time Bird appeared in one of our sur­veys, we found him at 10%. (Reichert was not an option in that poll, he had yet to declare his candidacy.)
• In Novem­ber of 2023, we found Bird still at 10%, with Reichert at 31%. Bird had near­ly half a year to increase his sup­port with Repub­li­can vot­ers, and failed to do so.
• In Feb­ru­ary of this year, we found that Bird had slipped by a smidgeon to 9%. Reichert also lost ground after being tied with Bob Fer­gu­son in the Novem­ber four-way guber­na­to­r­i­al ques­tion, but remained way out ahead of Bird.

We will be tak­ing anoth­er look at the guber­na­to­r­i­al con­test soon. Bird will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to demon­strate momen­tum in this upcom­ing sur­vey. Will we see a post-con­ven­tion bounce? Pos­si­bly… but the more prob­a­ble sce­nario is that Bird remains far, far behind Reichert. With­out a Trump endorse­ment, it is unlike­ly Bird can com­pete for one of the two spots in the Novem­ber gen­er­al elec­tion runoff. 

Like Demo­c­ra­t­ic State Sen­a­tor Mark Mul­let, who is also way back in our polling, Bird has some incred­i­bly vocal sup­port­ers. But there is no evi­dence that those sup­port­ers are numer­ous enough to pro­pel Bird through the Top Two election. 

The notion that he could eclipse Reichert stems exclu­sive­ly from arm­chair con­jec­ture at this junc­ture, and our team does not rely on arm­chair con­jec­ture when assess­ing the dynam­ics of a key con­test like the guber­na­to­r­i­al race. We stick with the avail­able and cred­i­ble data, includ­ing the data our own polls yield. 

What exact­ly the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty now does to help Semi Bird and pro­mote his can­di­da­cy remains to be seen. Bird has strug­gled to fundraise late­ly or build an effec­tive cam­paign oper­a­tion, so will like­ly be lean­ing on Jim Walsh and the state par­ty office for what­ev­er sup­port they can offer. 

Christo­pher Ger­gen, who worked with Loren Culp four years ago, recent­ly offered a harsh assess­ment of Bird’s prospects in a guest post for the Lyn­nwood Times, writ­ing:

The core issue hin­der­ing Semi Bird’s cam­paign, despite my per­son­al affin­i­ty for him and agree­ment on many issues, is his inabil­i­ty to expand his sup­port base beyond a small group of state-lev­el back­ers, main­ly par­ty del­e­gates and Precinct Com­mit­tee Offi­cers. His fail­ure to put in the nec­es­sary ground­work has left him with­out the struc­ture need­ed to build momen­tum and secure the fund­ing essen­tial for a cred­i­ble cam­paign. At this stage, the Bird cam­paign is akin to an octo­pus on roller skates: there’s a flur­ry of activ­i­ty, but it’s not trans­lat­ing into for­ward movement.

Ger­gen took the view that Bird had not earned the WSR­P’s endorse­ment and the par­ty did­n’t need to make an endorse­ment. The 72% of del­e­gates who vot­ed to back Bird obvi­ous­ly dis­agreed. They want­ed Bird, and they got Bird. 

But those del­e­gates were not nec­es­sar­i­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Repub­li­can elec­torate in Wash­ing­ton. A con­ven­tion can be more diverse and rep­re­sen­ta­tive than a par­ty’s cen­tral com­mit­tee, but whether it actu­al­ly is depends on how much effort a state par­ty invests in mak­ing its pre­mier bien­ni­al gath­er­ing acces­si­ble, inclu­sive, and wel­com­ing to peo­ple new to par­ty pol­i­tics. In this case, the WSRP cen­tral office saw the con­ven­tion as a fundrais­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty, and to ful­ly max­i­mize that oppor­tu­ni­ty, it charged manda­to­ry fees for par­tic­i­pa­tion. It was pay to play. And those fees were on top of the trav­el and lodg­ing costs that folks from the more pop­u­lous west side had to bear. Does­n’t sound like a process that was wel­com­ing to the low income house­holds in the par­ty’s base. 

If Wash­ing­ton had a real pri­ma­ry, Bird and Reichert would be com­pet­ing for a nom­i­na­tion. How­ev­er, since we hold a Top Two qual­i­fy­ing elec­tion instead of a pri­ma­ry, Repub­li­cans are not guar­an­teed of hav­ing a can­di­date on the Novem­ber bal­lot in any coun­ty, state, or fed­er­al par­ti­san race except for Pres­i­dent and Vice President. 

That is a major rea­son why Walsh staged endorse­ment votes at this convention. 

But the results of the mar­quee endorse­ment vote now oblig­ate the state par­ty cen­tral office to work for Bird instead of Reichert. In shun­ning their own fron­trun­ner for gov­er­nor and instead back­ing a fringe can­di­date with a crim­i­nal past, par­ty diehards are mak­ing it clear that they care a lot more about piety to Trump­ism than electability.